RaveOS vs. Windows 10 for Mining — A Switch for Stability and Profitability
Crypto Ascendant
2020 is an exciting time to be a cryptocurrency investor, trader, or miner. Each day seems to bring breakthroughs in usability and adoption. Significant purchases by large institutional players, the highly publicized investment of 50 million dollars in BTC by Square, sustained price action, maturing technologies, and a relative absence of significant hacks and scandals have propelled BTC and the overall crypto market cap to heights not seen since Q4 2017.
2020 has seen the deployment of numerous BTC derivative products, such as perpetual swaps and traditional futures. Defi has become the newest game in town since the ICO/IEO fever. In December, ETH is initiating its move to a proof of stake model, the first major coin to transition validation protocols.
For the first time since 2017, the crypto sector feels like it has momentum. The bearish slump following initial all-time highs and wild speculation has worn off — and it feels like those of us who have devoted our capital and computing hardware to the space will soon be reaping the rewards of our time and effort.
With BTC eyeing a run at 20k, people are starting to look seriously at how to get more involved in the space. The traditional exchange of crypto for capital is one way to acquire exposure; another common route is mining.
Mining as an Investment
Mining has an initial outlay for gear and power. Still, it can return a profit on investment measured in daily ROI, assuming that the price of electricity is low enough to remain profitable. You could purchase a wall of ASICS for your space and mine high difficulty algorithms such as sha256 — although the heat and cost of power will most likely shut down your experiment if you live in North America or the UK.
The other possibility is to use off the shelf computers and GPU’s to mine smaller market cap coins or those with algorithms tailored explicitly to GPU mining such as Dagger-Hashimoto. You can use server racks to conserve space while running multiple rigs (individual CPU/GPU pairs). GPU mining also opens the possibility of mining and holding lower difficulty coins that have just hit the market and stand to appreciate substantially.
No matter which route you choose, the hardware is only half of the equation. The second half is the software — not just the wallets and miner applications — but the operating system you use to run the hardware. You may be new to crypto and mining or just graduating from a single rig to a real plan for profitability with a sleek multi-rig/GPU setup and a long term view on some nascent assets. Either way, you need a complete and reliable solution for managing your miners. With a bull market growing nearer every day, this is the time to lock in changes and improvements to your mining setup.
Windows for GPU Mining
Windows is great for general-purpose computing. It frequently updates to keep your applications running and all of its components operating securely. It reloads drivers for the most up to date software interface for your hardware — all great features for a single general-purpose user managing one computer. However, gearing up for profitable mining will require not one amazing computer but many “good enough” stable computers running uninterrupted.
When you start seeking to amass a reasonable position of any coin or generate profit from daily mining sales, you realize you will need many machines. Depending on your situation — you might even need these machines to be in different locations physically. Multiple locations mean you have the initial installation and setup to contend with on each machine. Once installed, every time there is a significant update requiring a reset, you will have to do TeamView sessions or physically visit every device in your array. Likewise, any significant problems will have to be tracked down to the rig and reset individually. It’s easy to see how the issues can begin to multiply as you add rigs to the system. Tracking down and resetting a machine might be an acceptable inconvenience with one rig or even a farm of ten — but what about hundreds or thousands of devices?
Windows is not explicitly geared for easy set up of crypto applications, and many wallets and miners work better from the command line. This lack of support means ditching the GUI features that make Windows appealing in the first place. It might be time to consider switching from a general-purpose OS to a dedicated mining OS like Rave for all of these reasons.
RaveOS Provides Scalable Solutions
Windows is a good general solution. RaveOS is purpose-built for the crypto mining community, with a wealth of features making it a clear choice for users who want to manage their farms more efficiently and increase ROI.
The install is small — it can be fit on an 8GB thumb drive. Installation takes a few clicks and is easily automated across an unlimited number of devices. The process is simple and requires little oversight from the operator.
RaveOS supports all the major GPU chipsets/many major ASICS with rock-solid drivers in place. Updates happen as an entire operating system when you want them to — and can run across the whole farm. A user-controlled system prevents downtime from unplanned updates that can cause significant disruption for a mining operation.
RaveOS offers a wide variety of coins, algorithms, miners, and wallets, all of which the user can swap with ease, and a broad base of pools to mine. Rave also features group wallet management on the fly for any number of devices. Depending on the algorithm and GPU model, it can run up to 10% more efficiently than a comparable rig running Windows 10 or HiveOS.
Your personal user data and private keys are both inherently valuable. Hackers target both, scanning for personal information, mnemonic phrases, .json wallets, and other sensitive files. Windows machines are notoriously leaky and remain the largest target for hackers. It makes sense to separate your mining rigs from your general-purpose computer, so compromising one does not necessarily compromise the other. Running your mining rigs with a purpose-built operating system increases security, saves time, and reduces the energy you will spend making sure your rigs are up and running. RaveOS maintains no access to personal data except your public domain wallet addresses, and 2fa authentication is available — ensuring your rigs are as secure as possible from malicious actors.
Free accounts are available for setups up to 3 rigs, 2$ per active rig past that monthly. RaveOS offers discounted subscription rates for larger farms of 300+ rigs.
RaveOS Going Forward
The future is bright for RaveOS. With new developments happening all the time, we are continually adding new features and integrations that make life easier for the end-user and increase your ROI. Feedback is processed daily to keep our team on top of the mining arena’s newest developments and add the features our users want to see.
2020 and into 2021 are shaping up to be fantastic for the development of crypto as a whole. The pace of market development is slower and more organic than what we witnessed in the frenzy of 2017. It seems that the vision of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies is not just a technical diversion — but as a serious investment vehicle is generating a second look at the asset class by institutional fund managers. When it becomes a requirement for all those with fiduciary duties to include exposure to crypto assets in their funds, the growth will be even more impressive.
What is inexpensive today has the potential to be explosively profitable tomorrow. Don’t wait out on getting involved in the best-performing investment class on the market today. And if mining is your point of exposure, be sure you are getting the most out of your rigs: Let blue screens of death and forced updates become a thing of the past for your mining operation.
Get started with RaveOS today.
